It was overdue. It was necessary. And yet I suspect it will create more turbulence than clarity.
Because zealotry does not concede gracefully.
When people have invested identity, status, and careers into a claim, they do not suddenly accept that the foundation was flawed—certainly not when the claim in question underpinned an “endangerment finding” treated for years as sacrosanct. If that finding was inflated, distorted, or strategically framed, its defenders will not calmly examine the evidence. They will defend the altar.
Consider how institutional belief works. Imagine a piece of paper declaring that the sun is blue and water is pink. Absurd, yes. But suppose that paper has sat in official archives for years. Suppose it has justified regulatory frameworks, carbon markets, subsidies, taxes, compliance regimes. Suppose trillions have moved on its authority. Careers built. Agencies expanded. Fortunes made.
At that point, the paper is no longer a document. It is infrastructure.
People grow attached to infrastructure.
They do not want to revisit how it was drafted, what assumptions were smuggled in, which uncertainties were downplayed, which incentives nudged conclusions in certain directions. They do not want forensic archaeology. They want continuity.
So if the document disappears—if it is rescinded, overturned, invalidated—many will not interpret that as a correction of error. They will not ask whether the original premises were overstated or strategically framed. They will interpret it as partisan vandalism. As political spite. As one man trying to irritate his opponents.
That narrative is far easier to digest.
And once it settles, it lingers. “He did it to own the Democrats.” That explanation will circulate more smoothly than any dense technical review of radiative forcing assumptions, cost models, or regulatory overreach.
If someone intends to dismantle such a cornerstone, tearing it up is the easy part. The hard part is replacing mythology with explanation.
That requires something few modern politicians excel at: sustained, granular exposition. Not slogans. Not superlatives. Not rally applause. A disciplined team capable of unpacking the record in public—line by line, assumption by assumption. Showing how conclusions were derived. Where uncertainties were glossed over. How risk was amplified. Who benefited financially. Who bore the cost.
Because costs there were—and are.
Energy prices ripple through everything. Manufacturing. Transport. Food. Housing. When regulatory frameworks elevate one variable above all others, they reshape capital allocation on a massive scale. Some sectors thrive. Others suffocate. Some investors become extraordinarily wealthy. Others—ordinary households—absorb the inflationary drag without ever seeing the spreadsheet.
If the underlying premise was overstated or misrepresented, that needs to be demonstrated, not declared.
And that takes time.
What would actually help is something unfashionable and politically unglamorous: a comprehensive public reckoning. Call it a commission if you must, though the phrase “truth and reconciliation” carries its own theatrical baggage. Strip it of ceremony and you are left with something simpler—methodical exposure.
Open the files. Publish the drafts. Show the modeling choices. Examine the peer-review incentives. Trace the funding streams. Invite adversarial experts who are not career hostages to grant committees. Let them argue in daylight.
This would be long. It would be technical. It would bore the inattentive. It would frustrate those who prefer narrative clarity to statistical nuance.
But it would do what symbolic gestures cannot: it would replace suspicion with documentation.
The alternative is predictable. A headline reversal. A partisan storm. Two tribes shouting past each other. One side declaring liberation from regulatory excess. The other proclaiming the death of the planet. Meanwhile, the underlying confusion remains intact.
Overturning a document is not the same as dismantling a belief system.
Beliefs embedded in institutions require excavation, not demolition.
And excavation is slow, meticulous work. It demands people who can speak without hyperbole, who can explain without theatrics, who can tolerate the boredom of detail.
Whether anyone has the appetite for that is another question entirely.